10 Reasons WWE Is Losing Their Audience
2. The Show's Developments Have No Consequences
For a long time now, what happens on Raw and SmackDown often does not matter from week-to-week.
Many fans have switched to watching strictly the pay-per-views on WWE Network, opting to skip the weekly dose of Raw and/or SmackDown, and they don't miss anything of importance. In other words, those weekly doses of Raw and SmackDown have meant absolutely nothing.
During the height of WWE's success, one episode of Raw lead to the next, which led to the next, and ultimately to the pay-per-view which would then bridge to the next night's Raw. It was a cycle that worked extremely well and resulted in a record number of people watching RAW every week. It's called episodic television and WWE has apparently forgotten how to write it.
Raw hasn't had that "can't miss" feeling in years. Sure, there are momentws that fans get excited for, like the night after WrestleMania or if WWE promotes an appearance by Goldberg, but even for those shows, the developments don't typically matter six weeks later, much less six months. If any other show on television operated with such a short-sighted view of things, where plots are ignored and don't have any impact from episode-to-episode, they wouldn't be on the air for very long.